A place to exercise ideas before writing about them with greater discipline.

Thursday, September 11, 2014

Follow the Polls Off a Cliff

While I appreciate Al Jazeera English's commitment to keeping a close eye on the referendum in Scotland, I fear they are looking too close. It now seems as if they are running daily articles on the latest poll of how Scots plan to vote. Admittedly, these come from wire services, rather than their own staff. However, no one seems to be in the loop when it comes to qualifying numbers with respect to their statistical significance. Unfortunately, all Al Jazeera English is doing is relaying data from one place to another. However, in this case data that has not been subjected to rigorous interpretation techniques is no better than statistical noise. Al Jazeera English readers deserve better.